


Scenes from a Crossing

by Alona



Category: Mysterious Mr. Quin - Agatha Christie
Genre: M/M, Murder Mystery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-10 06:58:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12906588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alona/pseuds/Alona
Summary: It was the last full day of the crossing—time enough had passed to bring shipboard dramas to the boil.





	Scenes from a Crossing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eluvia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eluvia/gifts).



The sun was sparkling on the sea. The breeze blew fresh. On the first-class promenade, the passengers whose lives had been brought temporarily into close quarters strolled, chatted, and sunned themselves. It was the last full day of the crossing—time enough had passed to bring shipboard dramas to the boil. 

Mr. Satterthwaite might quibble with the quality of those dramas, but he had no fault to find with their variety. There was always something for a keen observer of human nature to witness. 

At the moment his attention was fixed on two remarkably good-looking young people stretched out upon their deck chairs, talking and laughing together. They were both about twenty-two, both bronzed and glowing with youth. 

The girl was Vic (" _Never_ Vicky!") Brewster. She had smooth black hair and vivid black eyes in a face of unbroken classical harmony. She wore a frock in a shade of pink that not one woman in a hundred could have carried off, and it suited her down to the ground. Mr. Satterthwaite, who always knew these things, could tell that a talented seamstress had given that dress a going-over to bring it in line with current fashions. The fabric moreover was flimsy, but used to best advantage.

The boy was Harry Ward, Vic's friend. He was as beautiful as she, in a contrasting style—curly dark blond hair and clear green eyes and an indeterminate something about the molding of his handsome features that suggested not all the darkness of his skin was owed to the sun. His clothes, too, were cheap but worn as though they were a king's raiment.

They were English, or they passed for English, and Mr. Satterthwaite was interested to know what they had been doing in New York and how and further _why_ two young people evidently without means had sprung for first-class passage across the Atlantic. And he had another reason to be interested in Vic particularly.

It had happened that morning. 

Afterwards Mr. Satterthwaite laid the blame on his stateroom being too warm, but the simple truth was that he had woken very early, been unable to go back to sleep, and had grumblingly dressed and gone out to take the morning air at the unseemly time of a quarter to six. On his way he had nearly tripped over Vic Brewster. The girl had been pressed against a bulkhead, sobbing as one heartbroken. 

She had whirled on him at once with her tear-stained face and furious eyes, and when Mr. Satterthwaite had begun to murmur awkward comfort she had cried, "It's nothing to do with you, nosy old cat!" and run off, rather like a cat herself, whose tail Mr. Satterthwaite had trod over. 

Looking at her fresh, happy, laughing face tipped towards Harry Ward, Mr. Satterthwaite thought unkindly that she must have run straight to a washroom and laid a cool towel over her eyes, which even without a trace of makeup showed no sign of all those tears. Heart-wrenching despair to perfect ease in a matter of hours—what had transpired in the interim? 

One further thing he knew about Vic: every evening of the crossing so far, she had sat at dinner with the young Sir Richard Lambert and his mother. The baronet, as everyone on the first-class decks knew by now, was in love with the enchanting Miss Brewster. The only question was whether the engagement would be announced before the ship reached its destination. 

Mr. Satterthwaite, thinking of her desperate tears that morning and watching her laugh with the handsome Mr. Ward, wondered. 

A shadow fell over him as he was wondering. The shadow spoke in pure, bell-like tones: "And I was saying to Lance just now, Satterthwaite, we could have used you at Heath's Priory last season." The shadow descended onto the chair beside him and was revealed to be Lady Constance Lambert, Sir Richard's inestimable mother. She was the very picture of graceful middle age, rather like a porcelain doll all grown up. Her maid, whose name was Garland but whom her mistress addressed exclusively and obscurely as "Lance", remained standing nearby. 

If you had asked Mr. Satterthwaite to describe Lady Constance (who was the daughter of the late Earl Sewell), he might have said that she was a charming woman and a complete original. The truth was that she was a keenly intelligent woman, who always made one feel that the hackneyed expression about a razor-sharp wit could in some cases be too literally applicable. Mr. Satterthwaite liked her—decidedly he liked her, not merely for her rank—but she made him nervous. 

"Er—" he began now, rising hurriedly and bowing as Lady Constance's pale blue eyes swept over him like searchlights, "er—I should have been honored to assist had I but known, my lady." 

"Yes, of course you would," said she, "though you shouldn't have liked it—do sit, by the way, silly all this ceremony—it was all very sordid in the end, you know. One of the maids had a young man who was no good at all… They found the emeralds, all right, _and_ worse." She nodded very significantly. 

Mr. Satterthwaite, having grasped that a jewel theft was under discussion and giving due consideration to what might be "worse", answered, "You overvalue my abilities, my lady. Some small success in the mystery line I have had, but for thefts—our police are a worthy body of men."

Lady Constance gave an inconsequential trill of laughter. "I saw you watching the Brewster child just now." She paused, long enough for Mr. Satterthwaite to think she had finished, and then finally pronounced: "She's very lovely of course, and quite a good head on her, and, well, one _does_ feel sorry for her." 

To Mr. Satterthwaite's intense surprise, Garland, softly but distinctly, said, "She's not a nice girl at all."

"Oh, Lance, leave the poor girl be," said Lady Constance. "Though poor Richard is in over his head with that one."

"Ye-es," said Mr. Satterthwaite uncertainly. Some months back he had found himself trapped in conversation with Sir Richard Lambert at a house party. It had been a trying evening, for the baronet was, as far as Mr. Satterthwaite could tell, wholly brainless. No conversation, no imagination, no opinions to speak of, and not much to look at, either; Mr. Satterthwaite gave Vic Brewster due credit for the interest she had manifested in his nattering inanity three evenings in a row. "Poor Richard", indeed!

"You men are all the same," opined Lady Constance. Then, cheerfully: "He's a lazy bones, anyway. Nearing eleven and he hasn't put his nose out on deck. Not like his brother," she added, smiling fondly. "Poor Gerry is always up at the crack of dawn, since he was a child." 

The crack of dawn—Mr. Satterthwaite's eye strayed back to Vic Brewster; he was wondering if there had been a scene with Sir Richard, to account for his absence and her raised spirits. 

Then a lot of things happened at once. 

There was a hoarse scream, echoed by a number of higher shrieks, and a splash, and a sudden babble of childish voices. 

Mr. Satterthwaite went to the railing overlooking the deck below. That was where the swimming pool was. He saw that the attendants had been in the process of drawing back the cover, and he saw that they had stopped, and why. 

There was a man floating facedown in the pool. The water around him was stained red. 

Lady Constance and her maid had followed him to the railing. After a brief look down, the maid Garland swayed and clutched at the rail. She had gone white to the lips. "How horrible…" she murmured. 

"Lance, whatever's come over you?" asked Lady Constance.

"It will pass, my lady… Only, that poor man…" 

She did not improve, and Mr. Satterthwaite ended by escorting maid and mistress to Lady Constance's stateroom. 

In this way he found out later than he otherwise might have that the body in the pool was Sir Richard Lambert's. 

"In over his head"—Lady Constance had said that. She had said it about Sir Richard's dealings with Vic Brewster.

 

"…so while I recognize it is an inconvenience most irksome, I humbly beg your patience, ladies and gentlemen, as we deal with this unpleasantness." 

Captain Simard, a bluff, red-faced French Canadian with a shock of white hair, had already given this speech once in English and was just finishing it up in French.

Once the initial storm of the discovery had raged itself out, the first-class passengers had been ever so politely herded into the lounge. The venue had clearly been chosen for the comfort of the passengers rather than the convenience of the investigators: the soaring wood-paneled room was designed to give the maximum illusion of privacy, full of alcoves and odd angles, and it managed to seem hushed and nearly deserted even when there were so many people crowded into it that a third of the men were on their feet. 

Mr. Satterthwaite stood with the captain. He had been drawn into the investigation owing to words he now considered ill-judged and intemperate, spoken to his dinner companions, a middle-aged French couple who had lately been connected to the consulate. They, having formed an unduly high opinion of Mr. Satterthwaite's sleuthing talents, had proceeded to give Captain Simard the impression that an international incident would result if he attempted to identify the murderer without Mr. Satterthwaite's expert assistance; which suggestion the captain, only too happy to avoid some share of responsibility for anything that might unsettle his passengers, had taken gladly to heart.

Mr. Satterthwaite was acutely uncomfortable to be cast as a detective. 

He had been taken to view the body. A sickening business, that. The left side of Sir Richard's head had been comprehensively staved in. He had taken repeated blows from a blunt object, roughly triangular in shape but difficult to make out in detail because the blows had overlapped and the damage was extensive. There were also scratches on his left cheek, strangely faint compared to the savagery elsewhere, and long scrapes along his right side and back. 

It seemed plain enough that Sir Richard had been bashed over the head somewhere near the pool, dragged along the deck, and thrown into the water where the pool covering could be easily moved aside. The actual cause of death, head wound notwithstanding, was drowning.

There was no question whatsoever of anything short of murder. 

The time of the crime had been set between 2:00 and 5:30 in the morning—from the time Sir Richard was last seen by a deckhand to the time the hands came up to clean the decks, after which a murder in the vicinity of the pool would undoubtedly have been remarked upon. It had been established that no one could have come up from the second-class decks during that time, and the officers and crew had been answered for. A circle had been drawn around the first-class passengers. Both decks had been minutely examined for any traces of the crime, without issue. Authorities at their destination had been telegraphed and would be waiting when the ship put in the next morning, but the captain had hopes of presenting them with a solution. 

As Captain Simard spoke, Mr. Satterthwaite watched the passengers. 

There was Lady Constance, established in an over-stuffed armchair, looking abstracted. Hearing of her son's death, she had turned pale and asked, in a solemn, childlike voice, to be conducted to a seat. She appeared to have pulled herself together since. At her elbow, Garland still looked like a haunted woman—Mr. Satterthwaite supposed that discovering the dead man's identity had hit her hard. 

Clear across the room sat Vic Brewster, with Harry Ward perched on the arm of her chair, his arm stretched over the back of it. It might have been a friendly—or overfriendly—gesture, but his usually smiling face was so grim and set that it was clear he stood as Vic's protector. Vic herself looked—poised, like a panther ready to spring. She sat forward with her hands clasped around her knees, her huge dark eyes following the captain's every gesture. Mr. Satterthwaite had not had the opportunity of observing the immediate impact of the news on them. Their reactions now only told him that they realized their danger.

There was one other passenger to whom Mr. Satterthwaite's eyes were continually drawn. 

From the first day of the crossing Mr. Satterthwaite had been glimpsing his friend Mr. Quin everywhere—on another deck, across a crowded room—always only for a moment—always without being able to reach him. More than once he had made a fool of himself rushing up and down stairs, calling out across the distance—all to no avail. He had begun to think his mind was playing tricks on him. 

But since this murder had occurred—no, tell it as it was, since he had nearly tripped over Vic that morning—he had been easy on that score: Mr. Quin _was_ here, and he would show himself when he chose. That was always his way. 

And here he was—standing towards the back of the lounge, partly in the shadows of one of the deepest of the room's recesses. The carvings on the paneling around him suggested a dryad's bower, and despite his perfectly correct suit Mr. Quin himself gave the impression of having just stepped out of the forest. 

But he was there. 

Mr. Satterthwaite, for all his assurance, kept looking back. Once Mr. Quin caught his eye, and that gently tragic smile spread over his handsome features—and Mr. Satterthwaite glanced away, flushing. But it did not stop him looking again. 

When the captain had concluded his address and the mounting uproar among the passengers had been unleashed, Mr. Satterthwaite cut through the commotion, went to Mr. Quin, and firmly took both his hands. 

"I thought it best," he said, beaming helplessly up at Mr. Quin, "not to wait for you to come to me. You have been uncommonly elusive during this voyage." 

"Is it so uncommon?" asked Mr. Quin. "I promise I was not deliberately avoiding you." 

Mr. Satterthwaite, who had begun to think something of the kind, said, "It matters not. I have found you out now." 

"And I am entirely at your service." 

Mr. Satterthwaite allowed himself a moment's sensation of triumph before continuing rather pompously: "Captain Simard and I are about to begin interviewing the key players. It would please me tremendously if you would join us." 

"But of course, if the captain has no objections." 

The captain, once Mr. Satterthwaite had explained matters succinctly but emphatically, had no objections. He _could_ have none, he intimated, to anything in heaven or on earth that would get this matter cleared up quickly and with the least possible discomfort to his expensive passengers; he would have had recourse to demonic interference, if necessary. 

Satisfied on that score, Mr. Satterthwaite approached Lady Constance. 

"Would you object to our beginning our interviews with Garland, my lady?"

"Settle the domestics first, is it? Yes, I see, Satterthwaite—go on, then, Lance, be a good girl and tell the gentlemen everything they want to know." 

"Yes, my lady," answered Garland in a colorless voice. She followed Mr. Satterthwaite to the small library adjoining the lounge looking as though a noose awaited her there. 

He helped her into one of a comfortable ring of chairs. He had thought her colorless, but out of the company of the overwhelming Lady Constance it was clear that was not so. Her hair was an interesting dark red and her eyes a deep blue. She was expensively dressed even for a lady's maid, in perfect though restrained taste. Her strong-boned face was raw-looking and shut up. She was evidently holding back a powerful emotion—there was fear, yes, but something else as well. 

When the captain, Mr. Quin, and Mr. Satterthwaite himself were seated, the interview began. Garland answered in a low, collected voice, volunteering no information that was not asked of her. 

Her full name was Elaine Louisa Garland. Age: forty-eight. Occupation: lady's maid. She had been with Lady Constance for over twenty years. 

What did she remember of Sir Richard's movements after dinner last night? He had gone to the bar to have a drink, and she supposed he had stayed there drinking until after her ladyship retired for the night, because Garland had not heard him return to his stateroom, which was next to Lady Constance's. Did Sir Richard have any enemies? She certainly thought not. Mister Richard—Sir Richard—was not a great one for brains, but brains were not everything. She believed he had been well-liked. 

"If he had a fault, sir, it was that he was too easily taken in by low women." This bitten-off comment spelled the end of Garland's information.

But something, Mr. Satterthwaite felt, was wrong. She knew something—or, at least, she was afraid of something. 

"If there is anything at all, Garland," he said kindly, "the smallest detail you may have noticed, even if it meant nothing—do please tell us. Nothing can be irrelevant in a murder investigation. This is—pardon me, I am sure you already grasp this—this is a very grave matter." 

"There's nothing, sir," she said, finally raising her head and meeting his eyes. "I've told you everything there is. Oh, that my poor lady had never come on this dreadful tub!" And then, at last and all at once, she began to cry. 

When Garland had been soothed and led away, Captain Simard said, "She is suffering from strong emotion. Could it be remorse?"

"Or fear of discovery," murmured Mr. Quin. 

"It would be so convenient…" said the captain regretfully. "Too convenient, I think." 

The chief officer came in then and took at the captain aside. 

Mr. Satterthwaite took the opportunity to present the story so far to Mr. Quin. The main players, as he thought of them, came vividly to life as his narrative unfurled. The clever and alarming Lady Constance, a force of nature unto herself; vibrant and beautiful Vic Brewster, ready to take arms against the world; Harry Ward, decorative and plausible, with somewhere a hidden core of pride; the victim himself, a man of simple pleasures and simpler mind. The discovery of the crime, the appearance of the body, the evidence collected—Mr. Satterthwaite described it all, quickly and deftly. 

"I see," said Mr. Quin when he was finished. "We have Miss Brewster, Mr. Ward, Lady Constance—and Garland, of course."

Mr. Satterthwaite started. "What do you mean?"

"Only that those are the four people with the closest connection to this crime."

Uneasily, Mr. Satterthwaite said, "It sounded like a list of suspects."

"If you like." Mr. Quin shrugged, then added, "The young people interest you, I think."

"I admit it. They are crude, rather vicious children, but—they are so very devoted, one feels." 

"Yet either might be a murderer."

"Yes," said Mr. Satterthwaite unhappily. "That does seem indicated." 

He thought of Sir Richard's ruined face and the arcing scratches on his cheek and gave a faint shudder.

"You have one particular suspect in mind?" Mr. Quin asked. 

"I would rather not say," said Mr. Satterthwaite, rather plaintively.

Captain Simard returned from his conference with the chief officer. "Inquiries have been made among the passengers. Sir Richard was in and out of the bar until nearly two in the morning, as the hands have already said. He played cards and lost heavily. One point of interest: Harry Ward was heard to refuse Sir Richard a game, very pointedly." 

"Did he, now," said Mr. Quin. 

"How do we proceed, gentlemen?" asked the captain. 

Mr. Satterthwaite, his withered old face very grim and elderly-looking indeed, quietly answered: "I would send a steward to search Miss Brewster's cabin for—anything out of the ordinary. And then we should speak to Lady Constance." 

He had caught Mr. Quin's sharp glance at Miss Brewster's name, and nodded very slightly. 

 

Lady Constance brushed aside condolences. "I hate all these commonplaces," she said, with a touch of real bitterness. "If you must be sorry, be sorry for destroying my peace."

She was more strongly moved than Mr. Satterthwaite had yet seen her. Her china doll cheeks were flushed pink and her blue eyes sparked. 

"You have all been bullying Lance, I know you have. She looks as though she had been tortured on the rack! There was no call for it! She's a perfectly harmless creature, and true as steel." Some of her anger faded. "I've always wondered—why steel?" 

"A million apologies, my lady," said Captain Simard. "There are certain procedures that must be followed in these cases…"

"Oh! Yes, I see how procedure is being followed." Her displeased eye fell on Mr. Quin. "And who are you meant to be? The ship's jester?"

Mr. Quin's eyebrows went up. "My friend Mr. Satterthwaite is good enough to ascribe to me some skill in resolving problems of this sort." 

"Then I must put up with you, I suppose," said Lady Constance, frowning. "Well—what do you want to know?"

Lady Constance had not seen Sir Richard after dinner, and she had not heard him come in, either. Had she noticed anything unusual when he had failed to rise for breakfast? No, he often slept into the afternoon at home. Had she noticed anything out of the ordinary at all?

"Only my emeralds." 

All three men sat forward. 

"Emeralds?" asked the captain, with a touch of despair. 

"Well, they've gone again, haven't they? I missed them this morning. I told you, Satterthwaite." 

Mr. Satterthwaite, containing some uncharitable frustration, said, "You must think me very dull-witted, my lady, but I understood you to be referring to the prior theft." 

"Well, it wouldn't have been that young lout Bob Wiggins—Windsor—whatever his name was, again. He isn't on this boat." Helpfully, she clarified: "He's in prison." 

The captain was shaking his head, his red face flushing purple. Mr. Satterthwaite understood: a murder and a theft at once. It seemed impossible for the two crimes to be unconnected, but at what point to connect them? 

"You trust your maid, my lady?" asked the captain. 

"How terribly unoriginal of you! Lance is a paragon." Lady Constance went on musingly: "It was the Brewster girl, I expect. Or the boyfriend. He's just how one imagines a jewel thief—only even better-looking, and not so well dressed." 

"With respect, Lady Constance, we are not about to accuse someone for looking like a jewel thief." 

Mr. Satterthwaite was glad the captain had said this, but the trouble was that he agreed with the assessment. If anyone had taken the jewels (and someone _must_ have), it had been Harry Ward—but the theft itself was all wrong. 

Once the flurry had settled—Captain Simard had not quite been able to contain a lecture about the efficacy of turning over valuables to be kept in the ship's safe for the voyage—Mr. Quin took up the questioning. Had Sir Richard had any enemies? Did anyone benefit from his death?

"He never won enough at cards to get enemies that way, poor darling," said Sir Richard's mother, "and he always paid his debts, I believe. As for benefit—poor Gerry will be Sir Gerald now, and the bankers may like him a little more—much better at holding onto money, my younger son. His wife is the most delightful young woman, and such a comfort—but neither Gerry nor the bankers are anywhere near here."

She left the library without adding anything further of use. 

"What a woman! What force of character!" exclaimed the captain, clutching his head. 

"We ought to have Mr. Ward's stateroom searched as well," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "And Lady Constance's." 

"I comprehend—that young man does have the look of a cat burglar," the captain agreed. 

"But not, I think, of a murderer," murmured Mr. Satterthwaite.

The captain cursed volubly. But he didn't disagree. He went himself to oversee the searches.

"Captain Simard has accorded us his trust," observed Mr. Quin. 

"Or he is more interested in the theft than the murder," said Mr. Satterthwaite. 

"I believe it is time for Miss Brewster to take the stage." 

"Yes, quite," said Mr. Satterthwaite with a sigh. 

 

Vic Brewster's beautiful black eyes were bright with alertness and apprehension. When she came into the room she stared hard at Mr. Quin, and kept staring until she had sat down. She manifested no surprise at Captain Simard's absence. Once she had given all her identifying information, Mr. Satterthwaite asked, what he had been wondering all along:

"And how did you and Mr. Ward—for I gather you are traveling together—come to be taking passage from New York?"

She answered readily—so readily he was certain she'd been rehearsing the story in her head while waiting to be questioned. 

"We've been friends since we were kids. Worked our way over about two years back, as professional dancers. We were going to go on the stage… America didn't suit us, though." An expression of irritation crossed her face. "We sold everything there was to sell and borrowed shamelessly off all our friends to go out in style. And that's all there is to it." 

Mr. Satterthwaite could fill in the gracefully elided passages of this story. His curiosity was satisfied. "And aboard ship you met Sir Richard Lambert?" he asked. 

"Yes. On the dock, really." Vic paused, then shrugged expansively. "I had better tell you at once that he proposed to me last night. I know it's no good keeping things back when it comes to murder." Another stare at Mr. Quin: appealing, or accusing, or merely perplexed. 

"A wise choice," was all he said. 

"And did you accept Sir Richard's proposal?" asked Mr. Satterthwaite. 

A tiny, tight smile tugged at the corners of Vic's lips. "I did…" she said, in a voice that was almost dreamy. "I felt sick about it after. He's filthy rich—was filthy rich, I should say—and it's better than I ever thought I would do for myself, but—but Sir Richard really was the stupidest man! I couldn't have taken it!" She turned to Mr. Satterthwaite. "I suppose you've told them about this morning. I'd gone up on deck to brood. I'm not sorry for how I behaved, though I know I was beastly to you—I might have _killed_ you for bothering me then, I was that worked up." 

She paused, evidently realizing what she had said, and then went on: "Oh, what does it matter? I'd let everything go all small and close in my head, sort of trapping myself—and then I thought, Lord, how stupid! All I needed to do was refuse him. You can't imagine how much better I felt when I thought of that! Sitting there laughing it up at the idea of turning down a life of comfort! And then… I'm sorry, it's perfectly dreadful, but my first thought when I knew who the body was, was, 'Now I shan't even have to tell him!'" 

A cunning little actress, Miss Brewster. Every detail and hesitation was perfect, and stark honesty became her at this juncture. 

"Who do you think murdered him?" asked Mr. Quin quietly. 

Vic stilled and looked down at her hands. "I've been thinking of it, but I really don't have the first idea." Tentatively, she went on: "He couldn't have fallen over and hit his own head? He drank like a fish." 

"I think you know that's a ridiculous suggestion," said Mr. Quin in that same quiet voice. "Are you protecting someone? Mr. Harry Ward, perhaps?"

With almost perfectly played surprise, Vic answered, "Harry? Why should Harry want to murder Sir Richard?"

Mr. Quin was examining her as though she were an intricate objet d'art whose value he was weighing. He answered her with a single word: "Jealousy." 

"Excuse me," she said, quite calmly, "but I think not." 

There was a faint knock, and a steward came in. He glanced briefly at Vic, looked between Mr. Satterthwaite and Mr. Quin, and addressed the former. "We found this stuffed under the young lady's mattress. You said look for something that didn't belong, and, sir…" He held out a necklace of emeralds set in gold. 

 

Lady Constance identified the emeralds and had them restored to her. Captain Simard was notified. Mr. Satterthwaite arranged his ideas. Vic Brewster hadn't said a word, not when the emeralds were brought in and not since. 

Once more Mr. Satterthwaite and Mr. Quin faced her. She held her peace. 

Then Mr. Quin prompted: "Well?"

"Oh, all _right_!" Vic exploded. "Not that you'll believe me, now, but here's the truth. We _were_ going to steal those emeralds—set ourselves up when we got back to the Old Country—it's how we ended up in first-class. We heard Lady Constance would be traveling this way, and that she never locked up her jewels. That's why I was getting so cozy with Sir Richard—but then he fell for me, and—and, well, even Harry said that was a better racket, and I should get what I could while the going was good. So there's to your jealousy theory, anyway! But we never took them! Not me, and not Harry, and we certainly didn't kill anyone for them!"

Without turning his head, Mr. Satterthwaite could feel Mr. Quin urging him to speak. 

"My dear child—young lady," he amended, seeing her bristle like a wet cat, "if you did not take the jewels, how did they end up in your room?" 

"Someone put them there, didn't they?" snarled Vic. 

"Yes, naturally," said Mr. Satterthwaite, "but who?" 

Vic stared at him uncertainly. "Does that mean you believe me?"

"Oh, yes," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "The murder is another matter, but I do believe you didn't take those emeralds. If you had, I suspect you would have hidden them much more cleverly." 

"Oh," said Vic, still sounding suspicious. "Thanks." 

Mr. Quin was watching Mr. Satterthwaite with quiet approval. 

There came the sound of an altercation from the behind the door to the lounge, and Harry Ward burst in. His clear green eyes were glassy with anger, or with fear. Vic raised her head and frowned at him as though he had just said something rather rude at a party. He flashed her a brittle grin before advancing on the gathering of accusers and accused.

"You're not pinning this on Vic," he cried, shaking off a steward who was trying to drag him back into the lounge. Quietly, Mr. Satterthwaite waved the steward away. "She never went near those emeralds, and as for that milksop of a baronet, she couldn't have killed him, because—because I—"

"Oh, for pity's sake, don't be a fool!" cried Vic, starting out of her chair. "You know you aren't brave enough to be hanged for me. And it isn't as romantic as you think it is, so don't start." She tilted her head, a gentler expression than any she had yet worn creeping hesitantly into her face. "Darling, you really think I did it, don't you?" 

"I—well—no, old girl, of course not—I only…" Harry ducked his curly golden head, looking rather abashed. He was heard to mutter, "It's what a chap does in the pictures." 

"And very silly I always think it. It's a compliment, really," Vic explained to her audience, reaching out to pat Harry almost roughly on the shoulder. "It's all right, Harry. At least—I think it is." 

Once more she was watching Mr. Quin with a serious, questioning expression. She seemed to see something other than his everyday appearance when she looked at him—as Lady Constance had seemed to, in fact. Mr. Satterthwaite felt an unaccountable stab of jealousy towards them both. 

"I believe this has all gone on quite long enough," he said. "I will send for Garland at once, and we might see this entire matter resolved." 

"Are you some kind of criminal genius, then?" asked Harry Ward, settling himself in his preferred spot on the arm of Vic's chair. He seemed to have taken Vic's reassurance as gospel. 

"Merely an old man who has seen something of life," said Mr. Satterthwaite gravely, and he communicated his request to the steward who had been attempting to restrain Harry. 

"You know, then?" asked Mr. Quin. 

"Yes," said Mr. Satterthwaite, simply. "If Garland tells us what I expect—well, I hope she does, for her sake." He was quite distressed by the idea that she might not. 

"We can only wait and see," said Mr. Quin. 

And just then, much sooner than the steward could possibly have found her, Elaine Garland herself was admitted into the room. She seemed to be standing straighter than before, and her reddened eyes burned fiercely blue. Without a word she reached into her handbag and pulled out a pair of shoes: expensive, spindly-looking constructions. They were both red, but one was a modish terra cotta color, and the other—the other was deep, dark red, with a visible crusting of blood at the toe. At a closer look, the other shoe, too, had a smear of red on the pale sole. 

They were the shoes Lady Constance had worn the night before. 

All activity in the room had ceased. Vic and Harry were staring at the bloody shoes with matching expressions of wide-eyed awe. And Mr. Quin—he was watching Elaine Garland fixedly. 

Mr. Satterthwaite gave a short, precise nod.

He said, "I am very glad you brought these to us of your own accord, Elaine." 

"My poor lady—" said Garland. "But it wasn't _right_. I couldn't do it—not even for her." 

 

"With a shoe! Stomp! Just like that, and brains everywhere!"

"Er—yes."

"Only loyal Garland goes and cleans it up—no more brains. What's to become of her?"

"I believe she would be charged as an accessory after the fact, ordinarily, but we have some leeway here…" 

"That's probably all right," said Vic Brewster, "even if she did try to frame me with those emeralds. Spiteful cow," she added, quite cheerfully. "I expect I'm too common for her liking." 

She and Mr. Satterthwaite were dining together quite late in the evening. From the nearby ballroom came the strains of a tolerably competent tango—the excitement over, the ship had returned to its routine. 

Elaine Garland had told her story. Lady Constance, who never kept regular hours, had woken very early. She had dressed in her clothes from the night before and gone to get Sir Richard out of bed. She had taken him out on deck for a talk. Garland had followed. She had seen them argue and Sir Richard fall—"The ship gave a kind of jerk. Not hard enough to knock you off your feet, normally, but Mr. Richard had been drinking earlier..."

"Avoided a collision at 4:53 am," Captain Simard, once more participating in the proceedings, had murmured. 

And Lady Constance had struck. 

"I've always been afraid for her, always," Garland had said. "Lady Constance isn't—quite normal, you know. She just does a thing—because it is what she wants. She has no idea of right or wrong. I was always afraid that one day she would just… And I prepared. I've read all about the detection of crime—so when the time came I could… cover it up," she had finished, distastefully. "I went up on deck and I found where she had left traces and I cleaned it all off… I passed Miss Brewster's door and saw it standing open, and with her not there, well, it is unpardonable I suppose, but I thought she would naturally be suspected. I hid the jewels.

"I kept the shoes with me. I was planning on throwing them into the sea, but I never could bring myself to it. Then you looked at me, sir," to Mr. Satterthwaite, "and you spoke so gently and seriously, as if you _knew_ …" 

"In a way," said Mr. Satterthwaite to Vic, "I did know." 

"You suspected Lady Constance had killed her own son? But—but that's dreadful," said Vic. "Even I didn't think of that, and I never think well of people." 

Apologetically, Mr. Satterthwaite said, "Well, you are very young. I understood what the weapon must have been as soon as I saw the wound—and having seen your shoes the previous evening..."

"You knew the flimsy things would break apart if I tried a stunt like that! And if the shoe fits..."

"Quite," said Mr. Satterthwaite, wincing. "And, you see, there was no one else with so clear a motive." 

" _What_ motive?"

"Well—it isn't nice at all—you can see she favors the younger son, Gerald, and his wife. Believing that Sir Richard would make you the next Lady Lambert was the last straw…" 

"Oh, _no_ ," said Vic, sounding, on the whole, more thrilled than horrified. 

"If it had not been that, I am very much afraid it would have been something else, sooner or later. Lady Constance is one of those utterly amoral people who sees only their own comfort. It is on that account that—well—I may have bungled the matter at the start. But, you see, one might have confronted Lady Constance without gaining anything. We required proof. We required Elaine Garland's evidence. And I felt it was important for Garland to give it to us voluntarily."

"She's a terrifying woman," said Vic, clearly not speaking of Garland. "And so would you be terrifying, if you weren't so frightfully sweet. Tell me, if I had pinched those emeralds, would you have found me out?"

"Heavens no!" said Mr. Satterthwaite. "Miss Brewster, I am not a policeman. I am not even a detective. There is nothing to interest me in a mere jewel heist…" 

Vic laughed, then. "Oh, I am glad you've decided I'm a real person. You know—" She broke off, and went on haltingly: "Look—you'll think it foolish, but—my Irish grandmother was supposed to have had the Sight. She always said I'd inherited it. I don't say you've anything to worry about, precisely, but your friend today..." 

She trailed off as Harry Ward approached their table. "They're dancing next door," he said, simply. 

"Oh, are they?" said Vic, breaking into a dazzling smile. "We had better show them how it's done. You don't mind, do you, Mr. Satterthwaite?" 

"By all means, my child."

She flashed him a sour look before going off with Harry. How strange, thought Mr. Satterthwaite, this time with gentle envy, that that uncouth girl should be sheltering a tendency towards mysticism…

Not a word of gratitude had either of them spoken. Mr. Satterthwaite reflected that it had likely never even occurred to them. He glimpsed them once more as he was passing by the open door of the ballroom a few minutes later. They were dancing together, graceful, weightless, like two people without a care in the world. What would become of them when the ship reached land tomorrow? 

He went out onto the deck. Between the chill and the rush to enjoy the liner's accommodations before the voyage ended, nearly everyone was inside. But there was Mr. Quin, in immaculate evening dress, strolling in long, easy strides along the side of the ship. Mr. Satterthwaite stood watching him for a moment. Then he went to join him. 

"So you are still here," he opened, nervously, as though he might unwittingly prompt Mr. Quin to leap into the sea or the air. 

Mr. Quin smiled at him, sad and indulgent. "For the moment." His words and everything in his manner seemed to acknowledge Mr. Satterthwaite's fear as just. 

"Is there… is there nothing further that we can do?" More insistently: "That I can do?" 

Mr. Quin understood him at once. "I should restrain your philanthropic urges, Mr. Satterthwaite, unless you wish to make lifelong enemies of those young people." 

"Yes—yes, I believe they do see it that way. Still it seems hard leaving them to become next season's sensational jewel thieves." 

"Do you think so? They strike me as being more resourceful than that." 

"Perhaps," said Mr. Satterthwaite with a trace of amusement. 

"It is fortunate, is it not, that Captain Simard was not present for that portion of the interview?"

"Very fortunate." Mr. Satterthwaite paused, considering, while a laughing trio passed them walking in the other direction. Then he said: "Did you come on their account? Or on account of the murder?" 

Mr. Quin merely shrugged, turning his head to gaze out over the ocean. 

Mr. Satterthwaite went on: "I woke suddenly this morning—about five—for no reason at all—and I had a fanciful notion it was at that moment that the deed was done. But perhaps after all it was only the ship changing direction to avoid the collision." 

"It comes, does it not, to the same thing?" 

A shiver ran up Mr. Satterthwaite's spine. They had gone round to the most deserted part of the promenade, and though he could still hear faint laughter from the trio that had passed them and though the music from the ballroom still reached them, he felt unshakably convinced that they had stepped for a moment into another world where no one and nothing could reach them. 

It was this way always with Mr. Quin. He carried with him an air of wonder and danger, dampened much of the time because he was so pleasant and so off-hand, but surfacing at moments to raise a chill wind of fear in Mr. Satterthwaite's mind. 

He had found that he did not mind it. 

He was quite certain that when Mr. Quin left him now he would not see him again—not on this voyage, and not for months or even years to come. He had said it himself: there was nothing uncommon in his being elusive. 

Without noticing it Mr. Satterthwaite had stopped in his tracks. Mr. Quin had stopped with him. 

In a voice that sounded unnatural to his own ears, Mr. Satterthwaite said, "I wonder—will you dance with me?" 

Mr. Quin looked momentarily taken aback. Then, smiling his tragic smile, he said, "Are you sure you understand what you are asking?" 

"I believe so." Holding out his hand, Mr. Satterthwaite added, "I am willing to take my chances on the thoroughly unmagical character of a waltz played by a second-rate shipboard band." 

"So be it," said Mr. Quin, and he took Mr. Satterthwaite's hand, and laid his other hand softly, almost reverently, on Mr. Satterthwaite's shoulder. 

And then they were dancing. Not, it seemed, to the second-rate waltz but to a low, plaintive music that seemed to come up from the dark sea below and resonate through all the mass of metal and humanity beneath their feet. Mr. Satterthwaite could not have said which of them was leading—it was, distantly, like those giddy dances in the dormitory back at school, or like dancing with giggling maids years older than himself when he had been a very young man. A lot of things felt distant, just then. 

But Mr. Quin's voice was close and sharp: "How did Lady Constance react to being discovered? I was not with you for that confrontation." 

"Pardon?" Mr. Satterthwaite scrambled to recapture his sense of the situation. "I forgot myself for a moment—forgive me—yes, Lady Constance. She took it very characteristically. She said—er—something about a mother cat being allowed to eat her kittens, and that being very sensible. It was only on the subject of Garland that she was at all emotional. Her 'poor Lance'—you have worked out, by the way, why she calls her that?"

"Tell me," said Mr. Quin with obliging interest.

"You know already, I expect—it is short for Lancelot—because her Christian name is Elaine, you see." 

"A strange take on the old stories." 

Mr. Satterthwaite thought he heard something laughing and peculiar in Mr. Quin's voice, and he was on the point of asking—but he did not ask, not then. 

Going off at a tangent, he said, "Much is made of a ship being a breeding ground for romance and strife. And it is only natural, of course, so many people thrown into close proximity. In this case, though, everyone seems to have brought their own baggage along."

"Everyone is always taking steps in their own personal dance," said Mr. Quin, "wherever they happen to go. Ourselves included."

As they spoke the strange sea-music had faded, and the world had returned around then, and they were dancing on the deck of an ocean liner to the thoroughly terrestrial music coming from the ballroom. Mr. Quin, frightening and fascinating and for once very humanly near, was watching him with a mixture of concern and amusement. 

Mr. Satterthwaite felt, what under other circumstances he would have said he had grown too old for, the bright and sweet urge to grab Mr. Quin by the lapels, drag him into a convenient shadowy spot, and kiss him. But Mr. Quin was neither a maid nor a schoolfellow, and to kiss him in the shadows would mean something altogether different—so Mr. Satterthwaite let the dance continue, slow and pleasantly yearning, until the song came to an end.


End file.
